I believe the console RPG, which hit a high point in the late 90's and early 2000's, is dying. By this I mean the traditional town-overworld-town games with a party of characters and mostly turn based (or variation thereof) combat. I do not mean action RPGs or massive online games.

What's to blame? MMOs? Lack of attention span? Time? Innovation of the genre?

Xbox 360 right now has the most RPG games, technically, available. However these are mostly action RPGs and the system has sold very poorly in Japan where most RPG games are developed. Nintendo's developers have not released any real RPGs for the Wii [the DS has got some which are mainly remakes] And the PS3... well... has no games at all much less RPGs.

There is little on the horizon as well. How could Sony, who's third parties banged out final fantasy, suikoden, grandia, chrono cross, xenogears, wild arms, lunar, tales series, BoF, and countless others have almost nothing in the works from third parties for PS3? FF13, sure... but did you know that one of the summon monsters is the main character's motorcycle? No thanks. And even that questionable game is far from finished. Gamecube had very few here and there such as Skies of Arcadia (a gem) but the Wii seems to have even less going on. And the Xbox 360 will have a hard time getting traditional RPG developers on its side due to poor sales in Japan and lack of traditional RPG market.

Anyone agree, there is a dim future for console RPGs ahead? Oh well, back to Bioshock. On the positive side, MMOs are getting really interesting on the PC side.

 

i think its MMO giants like WoW that keep them from making any good ones. lol i still play wow 2 1/2 years later lol

 

first how DARE you mention crono cross without chrono trigger first blasphemy i say! yes skies of arcadia was great for the cube but OMG tales of symphonia has has down the most fun combat system that i personally played and the wii is geting a direct sequle tales of symphonia: knight of ratasomethingorother which is rare if not a first in the tales series due to its popularity (although data on american sales have not been officialy announced) also came on some loose rumors (dont quote me) on a new game from sillicon knights based on the eternal darkness univerce (not necicarily a sequale) i dont know about other systems oh snap just remembered fable 2 but thats more actiony as long as there are people like me who prefer console gameing to pc the console RPG will not die out

 

chrono trigger FTW!!! but i agree..I am a hardcore RPG player...and I miss the classic rpgs...u r right too...with sony baggin the rights to ff7, 8, 9 and 10 (7 and ten were two of the most memorable) and aslew of other huge classics..dragon quest, tales, wild arms, arc, etc. I for one cannot wait for ff13...but i am so close to finsihgin 12 and stuck so it's been a few months...

 

while most will agree that story is the heart of a good rpg that being said you cant do a story like xenogears in mmorpg. sure you can have the story but it wouldnt involve the character you control and such which defeats the purpose. i tried the lotronline and sad to say i felt a serious lack of connection with the characters, which is important to me. take a game like fable, with its immese flexablility on character development. you dont get that with a mmorpg; yes you customize your character and blah blah blah but what about back story? the characters reaction to various situations those type of things get you to relate to a character. the major benifit to mmorpg is that the story dosent end but to me this is a double edge sword when i play a game i like to have more to look forward to then just making the next xp level. also i have game moods that change for instance now im in 100% zelda mode starting from zelda, zelda 2, link to the past,links awakening,ocarnia of time,majoras mask, wind waker(now playing), to twilight princess doing 100% in each game with the exception of wind wakers need for the gameboy advance to find some treasures. when im done with that i plan to do metroid in a similar fashion (although i cant find my metroid 2)

 

Some of the best games I've ever played are RPGs - incluidng Final Fantasy 7 and 10, and the Lunar Eternal Blue and Silver Star Story games (still two of my favorite games of all time).

I played WoW for a while, and even after trying to get in to it, it got boring for me. I can spend 2-3 hours playing a non-MMO RPG and put it down and come back to it later (although with a good story it's hard to do sometimes). With an MMO, it seems like you have to endlessly grind and grind and grind, thus consuming TONS of time.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I don't have time for that anymore. I'd rather have a 20-30 hour long AWESOME story than play though thousands of pointless quests and mini-games.

 

I haven't really played a real RPG since the days of Ultima. I wasn't even aware that they still made turn based RPGs.

 

Slowly dying I guess. I started to play roms, but now there's no time. Last rom I played was Lufia II. The Ancient Cave!!

 

i haven't played one since the original zelda

 

I have a massive stack of traditional JRPGs for PS2 that have yet to be played. Some of them only came out just last year.

PSP currently has quite a few, at least 4 or 5 out right now. There's a few on the DS as well.

And I haven't seen any traditional RPGs on 360 at all until Blue Dragon.

I don't understand where this "decline" is coming from.